Maggie Lange

In what must have been like a total James Bond scenario, a NASA researcher at Langley named Bo Jiang was arrested on a plane bound for Chinaas it pulled away from the gate at Dulles International Airport. No facts confirm that this was actually an action movie-worthy moment, but one can imagine.

The Justice Department has filed charges in a case against Jiang and an FBI affidavit confirms he was leaving the States "abruptly to return to China on a one-way ticket." He was questioned about some electronic devices he was carrying, which he said included a cell phone, a memory stick, a new computer, and an external hard drive. However, eagle-eyed agents discovered "an additional laptop, an old hard drive and a SIM card." Complaints were then filed that Jiang lied to federal investigators. He appeared briefly in court on Monday and will remain in custody until a detention hearing today.

There is some talk that Jiang is being accused of serving as "a Chinese spy" according to Representative Frank Wolf, whose district includes the research facility. At a news conference Wolf said Jiang worked on programs involving high tech imagery that could be used by the Chinese military. Wolf said he spoke out and revealed Jiang's name publicly last Wednesday after some whistleblowers at NASA claimed Jiang and some other Chinese nationals were traveling to China with laptops containing NASA research.